My mother holds the Quran in her hands and tries to spell the word: Iqra.
I’m sitting in a corner, silent, biting my lip from the inside. The thought of the protests doesn’t leave my mind—the ones happening in Herat.
I scroll through Instagram posts one after another: a Taliban gunman shoots a girl, a girl who is wearing a chador and headscarf, exactly as they want. The girl is shot and falls to the ground. I question myself again and again: You should’ve been there! Why didn’t you join the protest? Yet the answers fail to satisfy me: Because I want to stay alive. Because I’m afraid of death, of prison, of dishonoring my family. Because I’m supposed to live in this society, and I know that if I go to the protests and the Taliban even look at me, my family’s honor is gone. Setting aside death, the Taliban’s beatings, the prison, and the crimes inside their prisons. I’m a writer, not a protester. I’m just trying to survive and get out. That’s it!
Another photo appears on my phone screen: blood spilled on the ground. The voice in my head punches me: Is your blood redder than everyone else’s? I have no answer.
I sigh, get up, and turn on the air conditioner. Yep! Sit tight under the air conditioner, you coward! I sit down and turn off the air conditioner. I hug the pillow. My mother is still struggling to spell the word.
“Come, listen to my homework,” she calls out. “See if I can read it correctly!”
She has been reciting Surah Al-Alaq since noon. I look at her. She is lying down, the Quran in front of her. I get up and sit beside her, next to her pillow.
She tries to sound out the word: “Alif with qaf… ‘iq’… re with fatha… ‘rah’… ‘iq’… ‘rah’…”
“Mhm. Now all together.”
She hesitates for a moment. “Iqra?”
“Yes!”
“Iqra!” she repeats.
From above her head, I glance at her eyes behind her glasses and her forehead. Her gaze doesn’t meet mine. She repeats the same word again. And again.
“Mom, you’re reading it right; why are you repeating it?” With each word, my voice rises.
“Iqra.”
I raise my head and close my eyes. The voice whispers in my head, Having a good day, huh? Fear suits you!
Mother repeats, “Iqra… Iqra.”
I look at her sideways. I get up. I take long steps with my hands on my hips. I go to my room; the door slams shut behind me, and I jump. The voice in my head laughs at me. I shrug.
Balzac’s Lost Illusions is open on my chair. I sit down and pick it up to read. The voice whispers in my ear, Spit on such a book to read. I close the book tightly. I lie down, biting my lip harder on the inside. I see my image in the wall mirror; the wrinkles on my forehead have increased.
The door opens. Mother comes into my room with the Quran in her hand. “Come, listen to my homework. See if I can read it correctly!”
I sigh, “You remember it correctly. So why do you keep saying, ‘Iqra, Iqra, Iqra?’”
As if she hasn’t heard me, she sits down opposite me. She opens her Quran, pulls her glasses down a little, and while staring at it, she spells Iqra.
I know her; she won’t let it go until I tell her what happened.
“Do you think studying is a waste of time?” I ask.
She looks at me over the top of her glasses. “So far, it hasn’t been like that.”
“What if it’s futile?”
She gives me a half smile. “Futility hurts people. I’ve never seen your reading hurt you or us.”
“My heart aches. I question myself more these days, like, why am I not protesting? Sometimes I say that all I’m trying to do is survive. That my resistance is in the form of reading and writing. Sometimes I contradict my reasons and say that I hate reading books like this.” I point at my pile of books in the corner. “I try to tell myself that it’s not my fault that I’ve become accustomed to this situation. I’m a writer after all, what could I do besides writing? But then, I see all that’s happening… There is chaos in my head, chaos. In my heart too.”
She puts her hand under her chin and stares at me, waiting for me to continue.
“Do you think I’d be more useful if I went out into the streets and protested?” I ask. “Maybe I would…”
“What do you think?” she asks.
I sigh. “I thought I was resisting in a way too. In a society where reading and writing are forbidden and a crime, I read and write. I go to restaurants, all-male restaurants. Or when it’s dark, I walk on all-male streets. I don’t wear a hijab. You know? Things like that. That’s resistance too. Isn’t it?”
She closes her Quran and says, “And now you’re in two minds.”
“Mhm.”
“Let me tell you a story,” she begins. “I was thirteen, maybe younger, I had just gotten engaged. One afternoon, my brother came home, and something was different about him. He was anxious and eager. He picked up a shovel and got ready to head out. My mother kept circling around, asking, ‘What’s wrong? Where are you going? Don’t fight, we’ll end up in trouble.’ My brother only said, ‘All the locals are going to fight the Russians, I’m going too.’ Then, he left the house. He went to meet the rest of the locals behind the Ghorian Castle.”
I knew the rest of the story, having heard it many times since I was a child. But each time my mother told it as if it were the first time she was talking about it.
“They brought back his leg the next morning. We recognized him only by the birthmark on his calf. It was the only thing left of him. They dug a mass grave and buried the scattered pieces of our children’s bodies. You can’t fight tanks and rockets with a shovel.” She sighs.
“My grandmother’s family died the same way. A bomb fell on their house. The government was targeting the guerrillas, but the planes never cared whether the people below were fighters or civilians. If they saw people, they dropped their bombs. That night, a bomb landed directly on Grandma’s house. Every member of her family died in their sleep. She didn’t lose her mind for no reason. Do you know what it means to have none of your loved ones left with a grave you can visit? Nowhere to stand and shed a few tears? She buried all her sorrow deep inside her heart, and in the end, that sorrow drove her mad.”
She falls silent. I can’t bring myself to look into her eyes or say anything.
Then, softly, she says, “My child… our family has been sacrificing for this land for generations. I can’t bear the thought of gathering the pieces of my daughter—or one day my grandchild—from the streets. We’re already in pieces as it is. We’ve given enough. Our share of sacrifice is more than enough.” She holds my gaze, as if she wants to carve her words into my soul. “You’re not a daughter of the protests. I didn’t raise you to scream in the streets. Your scream would disappear beneath the noise of the crowd, but your voice on the page would remain. Long after the shouting has faded, your words will still be heard. This family has had more than enough protesters. We paid for it with our own eyes, until the smoke blinded us. But we’ve never had a writer.”
“Then why is it that every time I look at myself, I feel as though all this resistance—all this reading and writing—means nothing?” I finally say. “It’s as if I’m trapped in an endless cycle, returning to the same place no matter how much I write. Sometimes I can’t help thinking that my writing is pointless, that my reading is pointless. As if nothing will ever change, as if nothing is ever going to happen, and the world will simply go on, indifferent to every word I leave behind.”
Mother smiles bitterly. “And do you think people will gain anything if you are killed in the protests? Our people have short memories. Very short. You will be forgotten very quickly. It will be as if you never existed. Like ashes in the wind.”
“So, what do you say I should do?” I ask.
“Read and write.”
“That’s it?”
She raises her eyebrow. “That’s it?! This ‘that’s it’ of yours is a marvel. Look at me, I’m learning the Quran at fifty, hoping to one day reach what you simply call ‘that’s it.’”
She opens her Quran again. “Every day I ask myself why there were no schools in our time. If, when I was a child, instead of being afraid of planes and their bombs, we had a school, I could’ve studied. Maybe, by now, I would’ve become a writer, or at least, a teacher.”
My eyes settle on her, on her many wrinkles, on the flickering light in her eyes. My head is empty of every word. White, white. As if there were never any words in it. I have nothing to say.
She notices my gaze, smiles, and asks softly, “I would make a good teacher, wouldn’t I?”
A faint smile settles on my lips. A knot forms in my throat. I nod. Without expecting an answer, she lowers her head on her Quran, adjusts her glasses, and tries to spell the words:
“Iqra bismi rabbika alladhī khalaq…”
